KARATE-KICKING EUROCRATS WRECK THEIR OWN CHARITY SOCCER MATCH: When the European Commission’s interpreters faced off against their paymasters in the final of the annual ‘Schuman Trophy,’ the ambulances, police, and mortified Commission spokespeople were not far behind. The final had to be stopped in its tracks, leaving no winner. OLAF (the EU’s anti-fraud unit) was instead awarded the “Fair Play 2016” award for being “better behaved during the tournament.” Tara Palmeri http://politi.co/1rdz29B

ECB — EURO REMAINS THE SECOND GLOBAL CURRENCY: The bank made the claim in its annual review of the international role of Europe’s single currency.

DIESELGATE — Q&A WITH PARLIAMENT’S INQUIRY CHAIR KATHLEEN VAN BREMPT: The Belgian Socialist MEP reveals that carmakers aren’t even bothering to lobby her. That and more for POLITICO Pros from Kalina Oroschakoff and Quentin Ariès http://politi.co/1PhUqR8

GLYPHOGATE — HOW MONSANTO TRIPPED UP IN EUROPE’S WEEDKILLER WARS: “American agricultural giant Monsanto thought it was gliding towards EU renewal of its controversial weedkiller Roundup. It was wrong … Advocacy groups turned to their members to lobby lawmakers in national capitals … Protesters dressed as bottles of Roundup and called for officials in Paris, Berlin and Brussels to ban the chemical at rallies this spring. Avaaz also launched a petition urging the EU to ‘immediately suspend approval of glyphosate.’ More than 2 million people signed on … Their efforts have been effective but inexpensive.” Jenny Hopkinson and Giulia Paravicini: http://politi.co/1thYJro

BREXIT BITES …

FRANCE’S PLAN FOR A BLOODY BREXIT: The French plan to make Britain pay if they vote to leave. And the pain will arrive swiftly and severely to avoid emboldening anti-EU forces elsewhere in the bloc, senior EU diplomatic sources have told a number of POLITICO reporters.“[A painless Brexit] is impossible if we want to keep the rest of the EU present,” one senior French diplomat said. While there is unlikely to be an economic cold war launched by the French, they will push hard in targeted areas such as restricting the “passporting” of financial services, which allows foreign-owned companies to do business with the EU via offices located in Britain. “People underestimate the rights of the EU citizen,” said the senior EU diplomat. “You may have to go through diplomatic channels to defend your rights [if the U.K. leaves the EU].” Nicholas Vinocur and Tara Palmeri: http://politi.co/1UoBxxp

THE MOST DIFFICULT DAY … will be the one after the referendum, regardless of the result, a French diplomat told Playbook. That’s because Cameron will be obliged to forcefully implement his February deal if he wins; and there will be no limits to what populists across the continent will demand for their own countries if the Brexit camp wins. The most crucial view from Playbook’s source: “No is final.” France will not encourage a re-vote if Brits vote to go and then find they don’t enjoy the terms of their divorce.

DIGITAL DISASTER FORCES EMERGENCY EXTENSION TO VOTER REGISTRATION: With 214,000 people per hour trying to register to vote before a midnight Wednesday deadline, the U.K. government’s website crashed, leaving many wondering if they will be allowed to vote. In an extraordinary move, Prime Minister David Cameron urged citizens to continue registering on the site, and the deadline for voter registration has now been extended to midnight Thursday June 9. http://politi.co/1RX4PkU

DON’T MENTION THE B-WORD:The European Commission has banned its communications staff from publicly using the word “Brexit” in the run-up to Britain’s referendum on EU membership, officials told POLITICO. Some officials received a memo in May outlining ways to avoid using the word “Brexit,” which spokespeople have managed to do. Some Commissioners (Moscovici and Hill included) have still made use of the word, and officials admit it’s a widely-used term in internal meetings. Tara Palmeri http://politi.co/1XaeyfC

CAMERON’S EU BUDGET SPIN CATCHES UP WITH HIM: Boris Johnson is fibbing in his complaints about the EU budget, says Tim King, but don’t think Cameron has clean hands. “Johnson is reaping what Cameron and his finance minister George Osborne sowed … [the debate has been] replete with lying and distortion on both sides … Cameron is ill-placed now to counter Johnson’s suggestion that EU budget demands are almost arbitrary — made at the whim or discretion of the Commission — though that is a gross distortion.” http://politi.co/1YfhPdf

MP DEFECTS TO REMAIN: Conservative MP Sarah Wollaston, a doctor and former GP, has broken up with the Brexit campaign and will vote for Remain instead. Wollaston said her change of heart was due to the Leave claim that leaving the EU would unlock up to £350 million a week for the NHS, which she said “simply isn’t true.”

“For someone like me who has long campaigned for open and honest data in public life I could not have set foot on a battle bus that has at the heart of its campaign a figure that I know to be untrue,” said Wollaston. “If you’re in a position where you can’t hand out a vote Leave leaflet, you can’t be campaigning for that organization.” http://bit.ly/1U0ASIi

MIGRATION FACTS IN THE UK: Breugel have published research on the profile of immigrants to the U.K. Zsolt Darvas writes that the bulk of immigrants from 2008-2014 were 20 to 30 years old, and many of them are in work. He writes that as U.K. unemployment is close to a historical low since 1975, it is hard to see how immigrants have taken away the jobs of natives on a large scale. http://bit.ly/1swrosb

VISEGRAD TO REST OF EU: WE WERE RIGHT ON MIGRATION. “In 2015 we were labelled as European outcasts, but now what we were saying is mainstream,” Czech Europe minister Tomas Prouza told Eric Maurice. http://bit.ly/1swiVFi

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Germany, fears Europe is making itself vulnerable to blackmail. “The EU-Turkey agreement is supposed to be a model for new partnerships but Erdoğan’s aggressive behaviour shows how ambivalent such agreements can be, and African potentates will hardly be any less demanding in their dealings with the EU.”

Der Standard, Austria: “Conditionality — linking financial aid to a desired behavior — has hardly ever worked as an approach to financial aid and development cooperation … it is unimaginable that the EU will impose duties on exports from Ethiopia if the repatriation of rejected asylum seekers doesn’t work out.” http://bit.ly/28leP3g

Avvenire, Italy: “The EU’s plan rightly excludes dubious partners like Eritrea, Sudan and Gambia — regimes that violate human rights and increase the flow of refugees. Nevertheless it remains a questionable strategy to give money to governments that are not always credible: to corrupt elites that in some cases are even responsible for people fleeing in the first place.”

L’Echo, Belgium, writes the new policy may be “efficient but don’t look for the morals behind it.” http://bit.ly/1RXuI40

MORE FROM THE VISEGRAD FOUR …

The leaders of the Visegrad group from the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia, were in the Czech capital for a mini-summit yesterday, brimming with confidence and contrasting it with their western neighbors.

Brussels may be fretting about democracy and rule of law in Central Europe. But Viktor Orbán and Beata Szydlo are really, really worried about the health of so-called Old Europe. “Europe is cracking up west of us,” the Hungarian PM told the Prague European Forum yesterday, saying the EU suffers from the crises of economic, democratic and foreign policy “legitimacy.” He added his view that “The most stable region of the EU is the Visegrad [four].”

Poland’s Szydlo struck a defiant tone, slamming Brussels for hypocrisy, while Slovakia’s Robert Fico, fresh out of heart surgery, echoed the Orbán hard line on migration. The one discordant note came from Czech host Bohuslav Sobotka, who was wrapping up a year in the rotating Visegrad chair. Sounding distinctly un-Orbánish, Sobotka said the EU needs to “concentrate on what unites us” and find “common solutions.” A wag in the hall noted the Czechs are eager to improve their relations with Germany. Nothing like putting a little distance between Prague and the roguish trio (as seen from Berlin) in the Visegrad club.

POLAND — WELCOME TO EU B: “When Poland’s Law and Justice (PiS) came to power in 2015, the party and its leader, Jarosław Kaczyński, claimed to represent Poles who feel like they missed out on the country’s quarter century of political and economic revolution. PiS cast its rivals as arrogant crony politicians who cashed in on Poland’s transition and represented the richer western half of the country, known as ‘Poland A,’ and treated the eastern, poorer half — ‘Poland B’ — with disdain,” writes Norbert Maliszewski. “Ten years later, with party now back in power with a strong majority in parliament, the same messaging is at work in PiS’s current standoff with the European Commission.” http://politi.co/1VNlUog

GERMANY — MPs URGE MERKEL TO STAND UP TO TURKEY: As Angela Merkel tries to salvage the EU’s refugee deal with Turkey, German MPs want her to stand up to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and other Turkish officials for their angry and aggressive response to a vote on the Armenian genocide. Janosch Delcker http://politi.co/1tiuIYz

AUSTRIA — FREEDOM PARTY CHALLENGES ELECTION RESULTS: Austria’s far-right Freedom Party has filed a legal challenge over the results of the country’s May 22 runoff presidential election, when its candidate Norbert Hofer was narrowly defeated. http://nyti.ms/1tbtuh4

US 2016 — GENERAL ELECTION CAMPAIGN BEGINS IN EARNEST …

DEBATE STARTER: HILLARY CLINTON IS REALLY GOOD AT POLITICS. DISCUSS. Ezra Klein of Vox, confounds conventional wisdom in a long piece: “Perhaps, in ways we still do not fully appreciate, the reason no one has ever broken the glass ceiling in American politics is because it’s really f–king hard tobreak. Before Clinton, no one even came close. Whether you like Clinton or hate her — and plenty of Americans hate her — it’s time to admit that the reason Clinton was the one to break it is because Clinton is actually really good at politics. She’s just good at politics in a way we haven’t learned to appreciate.” http://bit.ly/1Zy7APt

Gender is inseparable from Klein’s confusion and revelations: “Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are both excellent yellers, and we love them for it. Nobody likes it when Hillary Clinton yells.” Instead of believing Clinton locked up the nomination by being the ultimate establishment hack, Klein suggests “another way to look at the primary is that Clinton employed a less masculine strategy to win … She relied on a more traditionally female approach to leadership: creating coalitions, finding common ground, and winning over allies. Today, 523 governors and members of Congress have endorsed Clinton; 13 have endorsed Sanders.”

EU VIEW: “It would be extremely difficult to work with a Trump administration,” said Pierre Moscovici, European economic affairs commissioner and a former French finance minister. http://politi.co/24B1sY3

THE 11 STATES THAT WILL DECIDE THE ELECTION: Trump vs. Clinton may be an unusual matchup, but their coming battle will be fought on familiar terrain,” writes POLITICO chief polling analyst Steve Shepard. “Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin. All were battleground states in the previous two elections.”http://politi.co/1TV2tVM

** Join us on June 20 for POLITICO’s “Innovation: The Way to a Low-Carbon Economy?” event, part of the Energy Visions series presented by Shell. To find out more, visit: http://politi.co/1TMY0rF**

NATO — TRUMP HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH INTEL POST: Donald Trump bragged to Bloomberg Wednesday that his criticism led to NATO’s plan to create a new high-level intelligence post to help combat terrorism. NATO says Trump had nothing to do with it. http://politi.co/1U7RoD6

BELGIUM — REPORTS THAT DEADLY TRAIN CRASH WAS PREVENTABLE: The train that crashed in Belgium on Sunday was not equipped with a security system that includes an emergency brake, which could have prevented the crash, according to reports Wednesday. http://politi.co/1t8fBjL

BRUSSELS — REWARDING GOOD SERVICE: As you read this Playbook will be locked in a human cattle pen at the Brussels 1000 commune begging for a ticket to collect a new ID card, based on a change of address notified seven months ago. For the second day in a row. Instead of boring you with that, Playbook asked Twitter followers to share examples of good service from local Belgian officials, so that together we can enjoy and encourage something better than what’s on offer in the Brussels center.

Playbook readers think Woluwe-Saint-Pierre offers the best service to residents, and that it’s offered with smiles. They also appreciate Saint Gilles, Ixelles and Woluwe-Saint-Lambert. Each of these communes offer some opportunity to transact in English. Etterbeek, Uccle and the Laeken parking permit office also get honorable mentions. Forest is said to have a light-touch police inspection (readers suggest they just check your name is on the buzzer, which is a far cry from the intrusions I’ve heard about in Etterbeek and Brussels center, which for some readers included inspection of their bathroom cabinets and under their beds.) Sam Rowe says she managed to visit two commune offices in Flanders (Wemmel and Vilvoorde) in and out within 30 minutes yesterday — and they’re eight kilometers apart. h/t Edward Lyons, Daria Catalui, Francesco Longu, Duncan Robinson, Stephen Quest, Aidas Palubinskas, Alex Rinkus, Emmet Livingstone, Simon Taylor, Helena Gomes, Jochen Hummel, Bruno Alves.

#BrusselsCalling: Media debate from 8:30 a.m at the Brussels Press Club, Rue Froissart 95. The topic is the antitrust beat, one of the most competitive in town. The speakers are Lewis Crofts of MLEX, Christian Oliver (leaving FT and arriving at POLITICO), Natalia Drozdiak (WSJ) and Alexander Pigman (AFP). Victoria Main, formerly of Reuters, AFX and AFP, and now Cambre Associates, is moderating.

Two events at The Square …

1) Roma Integration: Commissioner Johannes Hahn, George Soros and others will launch Roma Integration 2020 at 11 a.m. at The Square Brussels Meeting Centre. The initiative is co-funded by the Open Society Foundations and the European Commission.

CHANGING ROLES: Fabrice Pothier, the head of policy planning in the office of NATO’s secretary general, is leaving to join the consulting firm of the alliance’s former chief, Anders Fogh Rasmussen. Pothier, who’ll start with Rasmussen Global in September, will lead the firm’s Ukraine project.

APPOINTED: Ines Pohl has been appointed editor-in-chief for the German international broadcaster Deutsche Welle, effective March 1, 2017. She succeeds Alexander Kudascheff.

**A message from the EPP Group: If there’s one lesson we must learn from the terrorist attacks in Paris and in Brussels, it is that EU governments have to efficiently and expediently exchange intelligence between them and with the EU agencies. Until this very day, despite having numerous EU databases carrying valuable anti-terror information, there is still an alarming lack of interoperability between these databases. In the plenary debate that took place yesterday, the EPP Group asked the European Commission and the Council what urgent initiatives they plan to take to ensure the interoperability of existing information systems, and whether the Commission is considering a legislative proposal on this front. Read more on our proposal for an anti-terror pact. #antiterrorpact